...the worst we can do is to give up looking for it.

I've been struggling a lot of what it means to be 20-something. I often joke that my peers and I are "getting old." It's a funny thing when you don't understand why you're body can't function as it once did and suddenly realize that it's quite possible that it's due to age (wear and tear). Suddenly you can't stay up until 4 AM and be able to function later that day. Suddenly you're hangovers are far more brutal than you ever remembered them. Suddenly you can't go to In'n'Out and eat a double-double animal style and expect to work out immediately after....

That's how it happens too: suddenly. It feels like we were doing all of these things just yesterday...or maybe it was 6 years ago. I mean really, who can tell the difference?

And then on the other hand I often forget that I have reached this odd age of almost but not quite mid-twenties. Just a few a weeks ago I mistakenly wrote on an application that I was 22.

Now that was a strange feeling when I looked at it and really had to try and remember how old I have become. There was something about 22 that was amazing though. Maybe my subconsciousness is trying to hold on to 22 a little too tight.

Whatever the reason is for these absent minded moments there is no question that I'm struggling with growing older and what it means to be an adult and to find "maturity." There is this large part of me that is trying so desperately to hold on to my youth. I find it very depressing when I meet people who are not many years older and they've lost most, if not all, of their wide-eyed optimism. The spark of dreams are long behind them and life has made them jaded into a pit of sad, awful, cynicism.

Gosh, even just thinking about how horribly negative some of these people are makes me depressed.

It just makes me wonder if that's just what happens. It's just what being "mature" and an "adult" means. Some would argue that they are the realists. Everything can't be rainbows and bunnies and sunshine. There are no happy romantic happily ever afters. There are bad people, war, death, and natural disasters; things so far out of our control that happen and there is no way to stop it. I'm not saying that I deny any of these things. I'm not saying that I'm going to ignore it and refuse to do my part as a citizen of the world to help or prevent these things.

But I will refuse to accept that these are the only things out there in this big bad world for me to learn. This year (or any year.) I will not let the woes of adulthood get me! On the days when loans and bills and busy freeways and war and bad people start to bring me down I am going to remember all of the things that make me giddy with childish joy (which I must admit is a pretty large list filled with sometimes not-so-proud and very geeky things.)

I want my life to be rainbows, and bunnies, and puppies, and confetti, and fireworks, and happy fluttering butterflies in my stomach. I really do think that there are prince charmings out there for everyone who cares to believe in it. And most importantly I really do believe that there are still really good hearted and amazing people out there that all believe and feel the same way I do.

Maybe it's naive and I may find myself getting my heart broken a little more often than not. But I can't imagine passing on a sad sore image of the world to my children or my grandchildren or my nieces and nephews. I want them to be able to know and feel exactly the way I do: wide-eyed and optimistic far longer than the next person.

I found this passage in the book that I'm reading. It couldn't have summed up what I'm trying to say any better. Enjoy.

We all have a bit of Adam and Eve in us. Sooner or later we come to a point in our youth when we lose our innocence and it feels like we've been kicked out of the Garden. Whether we admit it or not, all of us want to make our way back home to that time again. But innocence lost is difficult to find. Nevertheless, we look for it. We long for it, dream of it, and are haunted by it. Occasionally we glimpse it again, perhaps in the laughter of a child, the first snowfall of the holiday season, or when we hold a little puppy in our arms. And then in a flash it vanishes and we miss it all the more. But I'd like to think that if we can get our lives just right and become who we were always supposed to be -- if we become the people we dreamed of being when we were young and pure and innocent, then and only then do we find our way home again. I don't think many make it. There are just too many distractions and obstacles. Yet I've come to believe that the worst we can do is to give up looking for it.

Following Atticus, Tom Ryan

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